U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [273]
"Love is very boring," he said. He and Eveline stood in the window talking about cocktails (he adored American drinks) and looked out at the last purple shreds of dusk settling over Nôtre Dâme and
-219-the Seine, while Eleanor and Maurice sat in the dark in the little salon talking about St. Francis of Assisi. She asked him to dinner.
The next morning Eleanor said she thought she was
going to become a Catholic. On their way to the office she made Eveline stop into Nôtre Dâme with her to hear
mass and they both lit candles for Maurice's safety at the front before what Eveline thought was a just too tiresome-looking virgin near the main door. But it was impressive al the same, the priests moaning and the lights and the smel of chil ed incense. She certainly hoped poor Maurice wouldn't be kil ed.
For dinner that night Eveline invited Jerry Burnham, Miss Felton who was back from Amiens and Major
Appleton who was in Paris doing something about tanks. It was a fine dinner, duck roasted with oranges, although Jerry, who was sore about how much Eveline talked to Lemonnier, had to get drunk and use a lot of bad language and tel about the retreat at Caporetto and say that the Al ies were in a bad way. Major Appleton said he oughtn't to say it even if it was true and got quite red in the face. Eleanor was pretty indignant and said he ought to be arrested for making such a statement, and after everybody had left she and Eveline had quite a quarrel.
"What wil that young Frenchman be thinking of us?
You're a darling, Eveline dear, but you have the vulgarest friends. I don't know where you pick them up, and that Felton woman drank four cocktails, a quart of beaujolais and three cognacs, I kept tabs on her myself;" Eveline started to laugh and they both got to laughing. But Eleanor said that their life was getting much too bohe-mian and that it wasn't right with the war on and things going so dreadful y in Italy and Russia and the poor boys in the trenches and al that.
That winter Paris gradual y fil ed up with Americans in uniform, and staffcars, and groceries from the Red
-220-Cross supply store; and Major Moorehouse who, it turned out, was an old friend of Eleanor's, arrived straight from Washington to take charge of the Red Cross publicity. Everybody was talking about him before he came because he'd been one of the best known publicity experts in New York before the war. There was no one who hadn't heard of J. Ward Moorehouse. There was a lot of scurry around the office when word came around that he'd actual y landed in Brest and everybody was nervous worrying where the axe was going to fal .
The morning he arrived the first thing Eveline noticed was that Eleanor had had her hair curled. Then just be-fore noon the whole publicity department was asked into Major Wood's office to meet Major Moorehouse. He was a biggish man with blue eyes and hair so light it was almost white. His uniform fitted wel and his Sam Browne belt and his puttees shone like glass. Eveline thought at once that there was something sincere and appealing about him, like about her father, that she liked. He looked young too, in spite of the thick jowl, and he had a slight southern accent when he talked. He made a little speech about the importance of the work the Red Cross was
doing to keep up the morale of civilians and combatants, and that their publicity ought to have two aims, to stimu-late giving among the folks back home and to keep people informed of the progress of the work. The trouble now was that people didn't know enough about what a valuable effort the Red Cross workers were making and were too prone to listen to the criticisms of proGermans working under the mask of pacifism and knockers and slackers always ready to carp and criticize; and that the American people and the warwracked populations of